34 Seconds

34 measly seconds. Less time than it takes to boil a quarter of an egg. That's all that got between me and managing to hit my target of a sub-two hour half-marathon this weekend.
It's hard to describe how annoying that is. Three seconds faster each mile and I'd have been inside the two-hour mark. One and a half seconds each kilometre. If only I hadn't been held up at the start by the pack of runners in front of me. If only I hadn't stopped for those two drinks breaks. If only I'd  been able to go a bit quicker at the finish. Regrets? Like Frank Sinatra, I've had a few.

No excuses though. Not even the weather. It was a glorious day for the Thames Path Half, sunny but not too hot, bracing but not too windy. Conditions couldn't have been better - which came as a surprise as we'd driven there through torrential rain which miraculously cleared up just as we got to the start at Walton-on-Thames. 
I was running with two parkrun pals - John and Dee Churchill (in the pic below) - which is always nice. Running 13 miles can be a lonely business sometimes, and it's a real comfort to have a familiar face or two alongside you, helping you pace yourself and offering encouragement and support.
Or, in John's case, berating me loudly for going too slowly as he galloped past me at the 12km mark. He's a strong believer in tough love when it comes to running, and he's also faster than me, so I tend to get quite a bit of berating. But it's good for me - so he tells me.
I started well (or in John's words "set off like a demented jackrabbit"), hitting and exceeding my targets for the first few kilometres. I'd hoped to run at about 5.30 mins per km, at least until the halfway mark, thinking this would allow me to run the second half at a slightly slower pace and still make my set time.

It's not an easy half-marathon to run, to be honest. When you're running along the river, the path is narrow and packed (especially to begin with), when you're running through the town the roads aren't closed, so you are somewhat at the mercy of cars and shoppers despite the marshalls trying to keep your way clear.
But I was still some way ahead of schedule at the halfway mark, managing to reach it in 57 minutes. It was after that things got sticky.
I made a fatal error, deciding to take a walking break to reward myself for being a minute or so ahead of where I'd planned. I should know by know this is dangerous psychologically, because it gets you out of the rhythm of running - that one-pace-in-front-of-another metronome that keeps us all going when we're tired and lacking strength. And having lost that rhythm it's hard to get it back.
I started losing pace and found myself needing to take continual short breaks just to keep going. At the ten-mile mark, I was still - just - ahead schedule, but the next tortuous four kilometres put paid to that. As the last mile post came into sight in the distance, some way up the towpath, I knew it was going to take an extraordinary effort to break two hours.
And then, POP! Something like a small explosion happened in my right calf. I shouted out, more in surprise than pain I think, startling the other runners around me. I'm always anxious about stuff like this, ever since I tore my hamstring a few years back, so I hobbled for a little and then gingerly started running again.  
At first it felt OK, so I took a wild guess at it being cramp. When I did my hamstring, I could hardly walk for about half an hour, let alone run, so maybe this was nothing serious. Then 300 metres further on - POP! again. Twice more before I gratefully stumbled over the finish line in 2 hours 33 seconds, each time making me wince and pull up before carrying on.

So I ended up, just outside the 2-hour mark, about a minute off my half-marathon PB, with a mystery ailment in my leg. What does this all mean for my chances of being able to comlete a marathon? I'm not sure. I do know that right then and there I couldn't have run another step.
And what about the mystery ailment? Having read up about the symptoms, I'm reasonably sure that it was a muscle tear of some sort. There's a thing called a "calf heart attack" when the calf just gives out like that, which involves tearing some of the muscle fibres. The cure? The usual - rest, ice, compression, elevation, with the emphasis on rest. A serious tear can take anything up to 2-3 months to sort out. Run on it again too soon, and you disrupt the fibres as they heal and put back your recovery.
This, thankfully, seems to be minor. I've iced it and rested it for 10 days and it feels fine. Today is the day when I put it to the test again. A nice gentle - and definitely short - run. Let's hope it stays in one piece.

  

My Favourite Week

This is undoubtedly my favourite week in my running schedule - the one before a Big Run. Sunday sees me attempt a half-marathon for the first time in two years, so the last few days have seen me concentrate on just two things - Tapering and Carb-loading. Or as I like to interpret that, Not Going Running and Eating Chips.
Tapering is actually a fancy name for cutting back on your training programme for a defined period, to avoid putting your body through undue stress and to make sure that it's not drained of resources you're going to need on the big day. 
So, in a nod to that, my last really long training run was last week, when I tried doing 15k before work. I was thinking of doing 20k, but I woke up late and lost half an hour. It was a bit of a shambles, to be honest, very slow and several walk/rest breaks - but it'll have to do. This'll be the first time I've tried to do a half-marathon without having done at least one 20k training run in preparation, so let's hope the old legs can go the distance.
This week, I've run just the once, a gentle 5k just to keep the joints working. Any other time my conscience has tapped me on the metaphorical shoulder and whispered "You know, you really ought to go for a run today", I've just replied very firmly: "No chance, mate. I'm tapering!"
Carb-loading is supposed to be a way of storing glycogen in your muscles. The science suggests you should be doing it 2-3 days before a long race, not a whole week before. Also, chips is not on any nutritionist's recommended menu for endurance athletes that I can find. This is unfair and chipophobic. There are carbs in chips. Lots of them. Anyway, carb-loading is also a good excuse to eat mounds of pasta, so I will be doing that as well.
As to the race itself, it's the fancily-titled Thames Half Marathon which advertises itself as a "flat, fast and scenic" run, largely along the Thames towpath between Walton and Hampton 

 Court - presumably the scenic bit doesn't include the sewage plant at the 6/11 mile stage, but let's not be picky.
I had sort of forgotten exactly how far 13 and a bit miles is until I looked at the course on the map, and am currently feeling a bit daunted. Can I do it in a decent time? I'm really not sure. The other day, when I'd done 10 miles in an hour and a half, I was feeling quite cocky about it. This week, not so much. Under two hours is my nominal target. Just finishing is perhaps a more realistic one.
We'll find out on Sunday. For the moment, I've got some more tapering and carb-loading to get on with.

Smashing It At Shoreditch

Quite frankly, I'm not entirely sure where that performance came from. I wish I did, really. It'd be nice to be able to point to a dramatic change in my training regime, or an ingenious high-protein diet, or a fancy new bit of equipment, and say "Aha! That's what helped me smash my personal best" - and then keep on using it.  

But I can't. All I know is that the Shoreditch 10k run last weekend was an absolute blast. To begin with, it's a lovely course twisting and turning through the back streets of the area - flat as a .. well, I've had pancakes with more inclines.
It's the first one staged by Adidas in their "City Run" series, so they were determined to impress as a host and they did a pretty good job. Although forcing everyone to wear the same T-shirt emblazoned with the City Run logo was a little strange - and I could have done with some free water bottles before the start.
I was determined not to repeat mistakes made in the 10k I ran in May, and settled into a nice easy pace from the off. I started alongside Roger, a friend from my local Parkrun, but he's a much faster runner so I was unsurprised to see him head off into the distance after the first 200 metres. 
I think I mentioned in my last blog entry that I'd have been pleased with any time under 55 minutes, which is an average of 5.30 minutes a kilometre - easily achievable in theory as long as my stamina holds out. In contrast to the May 10k, I was - I thought - keeping it steady in the first few km, so I was quite startled when I checked my time at the end of the third. 15.05. I was running about a minute and a half faster than I'd thought.

Two possible outcomes. Either I was going to blow up spectacularly like I did in May, or I was actually on course for what would for me be a ridiculously fast time. I mentally checked how I was doing. Felt fine. No aches and pains. Breathing well. Legs not feeling heavy yet. Not much of a sweat. It might not last, but I could keep this pace up for a least a little longer.
Then, just in front of me, I caught sight of my Parkrun buddy Roger - a very good sign. If I was within catching distance of him, then I knew I was running well. I resolved to keep him in my eyeline for as long as I could. Not so easy, mind, when everyone's wearing the same T-shirt - it's hard to keep track of individuals. Luckily for me, Roger was wearing a very bright pair of lime-ish green shorts, so even in the sea of Adidas blue, he was difficult to miss.
At halfway, I was still OK. Didn't even slow down at the water stop. Could still see Roger's green shorts. At one point, I even caught up with him and overtook him (for about one stride before he restored the natural order of things). I'm still running at about 5 minutes per km, and I'm getting to the stage where I'm actually believing I can keep this going. As usual, half (if not more) of the battle is psychological rather than physiological, so that belief is vitally important.

Finally the turn for home, and the last couple of kilometres. I start feeling that ache across the thighs as your body tries to tell you it's done about all it can. My pace dips to about 5.20 and, most, importantly, there is no longer a pair of lime-green shorts in sight. I've lost Roger. I'm going to have to get to the finish on my own. I start mentally counting down the distance, in little parcels of 100 metres ("1200 to go, just 12 more of these, you can do this"). I start to up my pace, knowing that it's nearly finished. With about 300 metres to go, I start sprinting - too early, I think to myself. I pass a trio of fit-looking young women who are playing some banging tune out loud while they're running. I hear one say "Right ladies, 300 to go, let's kick it up" and the beat seems to increase a notch. Well, if they're going to start sprinting, I can't slow down, I'll just have to go faster. By now I'm flat out and I have no choice except to keep it going to the end.

I round the last bend and there it is. The finish line. Paradise. I'm practically falling over my feet now and I sort of half-sprint, half-stumble my way over it. I look down at my Garmin and I can't believe the time. Two minutes faster than I've ever run a 10k before. That's unreal. That can't be true. But it is. 
I look up and there's Roger, who's finished about 15 seconds ahead of me. And I think to myself, you know, Rob - maybe you actually can run after all.

Holidays In The Sun/Stamina In The UK

There's a lot gone on since I last updated this blog. For one thing, I've been on holiday. Generally, I'm not a huge fan of running on holiday. It's either too hot or too hilly. Or in the case of one vacation in Portugal a couple of years back when I thought I was going to pass out on the run back, both. The last time I was out of the country for any length of time was the fortnight I spent in Goa back in January, which was a particular challenge. You could only really run if you got up at dawn and headed straight out, or timed it just as the sun was dipping down below the horizon. Then you had a choice of a strength-sapping slog across sandy beaches or, if you tried the roads, a dangerous dodgem course round vagrant cows, flea-bitten dogs and the ubiquitous tuk-tuks. 

Lloret de Mar "stadium"

So I was expecting the worst, running-wise, when we took the kids to Lloret de Mar on the Costa Brava - but I couldn't have been more wrong. Right outside our apartment was a municipal running track, in a rather ramshackle little stadium, open pretty much all day and completely free to use. Its main customers appeared to be groups of elderly Catalans performing mid-morning exercise walks on the outer lanes, which meant I pretty much had the inside lanes to myself.
Some of my running friends tell me they hate doing laps of a track - too boring, no scenery and so on. Me, I love it because you're only ever 400 metres away from being able to tick off  another "segment" of the run. Also I love the bounce of the track under your feet - such a relief after the hard pounding your soles get from pavements and concrete paths. True, age and overuse had taken much of the bounce out of this particular track (a feeling I'm sure many of us can sympathise with), but even so, it was an unexpected delight.
I did mention in my last entry to this blog that I'd been upping my distances recently. So one morning in Lloret, I managed an epic 30 laps of the track (12k, or 11.95k according to my fussy and overly pedantic Garmin GPS). And that's just the start. Since returning to the UK, I managed this effort which I'm rather proud of:

It seems I've finally got my stamina back. Which is useful for a would-be marathon runner really. I've slowly been pushing the distances up, and am hoping to hit 13 miles plus by the end of the month (16k is about 10 miles for those without an imperial/metric converter to hand). 

So how did this happen? Well, I tried a lot of things but in the end it came down to stopping caring about pace. I gave up worrying about how fast (or to be more honest, slow) I was running, stopped berating myself if I was a couple of minutes slower over 10k, say, than the time before, and concentrated on enjoying my runs. Well, not enjoying exactly, but going at a pace where I wasn't exhausting myself too early. 

I start with a nice easy lope for the first few kilometres. If I feel I'm beginning to go at a pace which is seeping too much energy, I deliberately rein myself in. So by the time I'm in the last third, say, of my run, it doesn't feel like purgatory to continue.

And weirdly, not only did my stamina magically return, but after a bit, so did my pace. I'm now hitting times that are at or pretty close to my best, even with the first part of the run being at a slower pace than I was doing before.

There is a theory I've read that might help explain it, which says that at slower speeds your body burns fat rather than sugar, so that short-term energy stores remain relatively undepleted, and so by deliberately training at a slower speed for longer, you can "coach" your body to burn fat rather than sugar for longer. God knows whether it's true or not, but it did make a kind of sense.

Anyway, onwards and upwards. Huge month for me - I have two races to look forward to. One is the Adidas 10k in Shoreditch on Sunday,

at which I'd like to run under 55 minutes; but the big test is at the end of October, when I run the River Thames half-marathon - my first 13-miler for a couple of years. Training times would suggest I might be heading for about 2 hours, assuming I actually finish. I've still got a little way to go distance-wise before I'm entirely confident I'll be able to. I'll keep you posted.  

I Got Rhythm (just as soon as I find my earphones)

As I was setting off for a 13k run the other day (YES! 13k! I appear to have my stamina back again - but more of that good news another time), I was struck by an unsettling and potentially unanswerable question - namely, which light-fingered little sod has nicked my earphones?
I like my earphones. I pay a lot of money for them, in the probably baseless hope that they will last longer if they're more expensive. They have a little case they live in, which sits on my desk. Or rather, in this instance, appears to have been removed from my desk by person or persons unknown.
The upshot is that I faced the prospect of an hour-plus run with no music. This I find difficult. I have a special "running" playlist on my phone that helps take my mind off the aches and strains of pounding the pavements and stops me checking my Garmin every five seconds to see how much distance I have or have not covered.
It's a bit of an esoteric playlist. Other runners seem to have ones featuring some banging grime from Stormzy, house/hip-hop mashups, and the odd classic up-tempo funk number. Mine's mostly late 70s/early 80s new wave. It's fair to say my musical tastes have not advanced greatly from my 15th birthday onwards.

There is some newer stuff on there. One of my particular favourites is Vampire Weekend's A-Punk, which never fails to make my feet pick up the pace. The only trouble with it is it only lasts 2 minutes. I used to be able to time a 5k run to last almost the whole of VW's debut album, with the final sprint to the tune of their barnstorming gig closer Walcott. I run a bit too fast to do that these days. 
There's also a few from indie rockers The Vaccines on there, a couple from The Killers, and a whole swathe from my favourite punky-folk musician Frank Turner, most of whose songs are about coping with pain and anguish, which seems somewhat appropriate to listen to while running.
But the great majority of entries on my playlist are from the three or four years I still regard as the golden age of pop music, or at least the golden age of jumping about to three or four lads whacking the knackers out of three chords and a basic one-two drum beat. The Clash, The Jam, The Undertones and Blondie are all heavily featured. In addition to that, there is a heavy preponderance of 2-Tone and ska, which will surprise no-one who knows me. Ranking Full Stop by The Beat, for example, always manages to lift me up when my spirits are sagging somewhere about the seventh mile.

But my all-time favourite, the one that picks me up and drives me forward with new energy and verve is Show Me, the 1981 soul classic by scruffy Brummie scamps Dexys Midnight Runners. It's a song that hits the ground not just running but sprinting, the sax and the horn sections cracking into a furious feet-tapping pace from the opening bar before lead singer Kevin Rowland launches into a plaintive rant about the whereabouts of the wild boys of his childhood, topping it off with a heartfelt chorus calling for a return to the spirit and energy and adventure of youth. And I can't help feeling that's exactly what I need as I force my tired, creaking joints through another interminable kilometre.
Anyway, the Mystery Of The Missing Earphones has been solved. It turns out they were still in the bag I'd put them in a couple of days before on my way to work. I plug them into the phone, press play (and yay, it's Sally MacLennane by The Pogues up next), and away we go.

Running out of steam

So this stamina thing. It's beginning to get me down. I haven't had two decent consecutive runs in over a month. Every now and then I hit a sweet spot and feel I'm coming out this slump - a perfectly creditable 10k up and down the hills of Enfield a couple of weeks back, a sub-26-minute 5k round Regent's Park about 10 days ago - and then the next outing, it all goes wrong again.
I can't really explain how it feels. I'll be cantering along quite happily when suddenly I just seem to run out of steam. My lungs feel tight and my legs seem to leak energy. It happens within about 100 yards, from starting to feel in trouble to my body just giving up, and the only thing I can do is stop, walk, and recuperate.

Distances that once seemed easy now look unattainable. Times that were achievable seem like a distant fantasy. I simply can't figure what's wrong. So I did what any runner would do in the circumstances. I googled it.
It turns out this is much more of a common condition than I had thought. Typing in "running loss of sta" brings up about 200 different web pages before I've even managed to get to the "mina". 
The internet is great for that, helping you realise you're not alone. The trouble is, it's also great for throwing up about a thousand different prognoses of what might be wrong with you, and a million possible solutions.
So far, I've gleaned that it might be down to "over-training" (highly doubt that, to be fair). Or a change in diet (nope). Or changes in heat and humidity. Or stress levels. Or weight gain (charming, and err, no). Iron deficiency, lack of protein supplements, changes in blood sugar, not enough carbs, too many carbs, lack of sleep, lack of recovery time, too many long runs, too many short runs - all these theories have their supporters.
I've read that runners with this condition should run less, run more, do more interval training, do more consistent long runs, take protein shakes, take iron supplements, take a blood test. And so on and so on. Reading through the list of potential therapies is a marathon in itself.
The one that seems to make the most sense is to me is that I'm trying to do too many long runs at race pace. A consistent theme of the advice is that only about a quarter of my runs should be at that intensity, with most of the rest at an easier pace.
So that is what I'll be trying first - slackening off the pace and seeing if that helps me get my distances back on track. Thinking back to how I trained for half-marathons in the past, I was always more concerned with how far I could go rather than how fast - and that seemed to work. Fingers crossed.
Ending on a slightly happier note, a couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of taking part in the Golden Stag Mile, which is not (perhaps sadly) a long-distance pre-wedding pub crawl but an annual event organised by Barnet and District Athletics Club. It's an evening of mile races, with the runners divided up by ability, and held this year at the very pretty Finsbury Park athletics track.

I won one of the races last year, largely because I had badly over-estimated my likely running time and had ended up being put in an easy category with slower runners.
This year I was up against somewhat fiercer competition so the pressure was on. The bloke who won (number 227 in the podium picture on the right) was classes better than the rest of us; but I managed to either a) run a perfectly-judged race (if you weren't there to see it) or b) hold on grimly for third (if you were). 
Either way, I got to stand on a podium and have a medal hung round my neck and apart from what I consider the disappointing absence of a national anthem, it was just like the Olympics. Or as close as I'll ever get to it anyway.

Running through treacle (and getting a hug from Jo Pavey)

And so to the Vitality London 10k, always held on the Bank Holiday Monday at the end of May - except for the time a couple of years back, when they shifted it to the Sunday, I missed the email and consequently missed the race as well. Never happens to Sir Mo.. 
It's a lovely run, largely flat and past many of the capital's most famous landmarks. There's a wonderful atmosphere to it as well - something rather inspiring about being part of an event with 12,000 eager runners, many of them sporting the vest of the charity they're doing it for. 

As you can see from my selfie, it starts (and ends) on The Mall outside Buckingham Palace, which makes it feel like a proper race. The sun's shining (usually), there are bands playing and spectators lining the course and cheering you on - you do feel quite special while you're running it. 
The weather didn't entirely play ball this year, however - from about an hour before the start, you could feel the humidity climbing and it was pretty clear that it was going to be a bit tougher than normal.
Regular readers of this blog (both of you) will know that my training has not been exactly inspiring going into this race. I even had to pull out of a parkrun halfway through a couple of days before. Something isn't quite right - there's a lack of stamina that's bothering me, so my aim for the day was to get round, pace myself carefully, and not worry too much about how cripplingly slow I was actually travelling.
It didn't quite go to plan. For the first couple of kilometres, I found myself running quite comfortably. Quite, well, fast even. On schedule for a personal best. I made my first mistake, however, at the water station about 3.5km in. Took a bottle, a quick sip and then poured the rest of the contents over my head to try to cool down.
I've done this before. In moderation it's a good tactic. Using the whole bottle, however, is not. Immediately, your (now sopping wet) running vest sticks to you like over-enthusiastic clingfilm, making you hot and clammy and damp at the same time. I spent the next kilometre fruitlessly trying to peel the vest off my chest, which I can tell you does nothing for your running style. 
Still, by halfway, I was still going pretty well (about 5 mins 12 secs per km, for anyone interested) when it all started to go wrong. I'd just rounded the Bank of England and was heading back towards St Paul's Cathedral when the heat and the humidity finally caught up with me, and my legs started to feel heavy and cramped. 
I could almost feel the speed leaking out of me. It really did feel like running through treacle, just a battle to keep on going. I struggled on for a little, tried to get my mind to force my legs to keep going, but couldn't do it. I had to stop and walk for 100 metres or so to try to recover my energy.
From then, it was a bit of a disaster - stop-start, stop-start, getting slower and slower as a result. Once you've taken a break, I've found, it's really hard to get back into the right mental state - and I certainly didn't manage it this time. 

Still, at least I finished. I passed two poor runners who'd collapsed at the side of the road and were being treated by the emergency services - I've not seen that before. Both of them looked quite fit and sporty, so presumably they'd just overdone it in the conditions.
The picture here doesn't quite do justice to how terrible I was feeling at the end. Perhaps I should have taken one of me a few seconds later, hunched over the crash barrier, trying not to crumple into a sodden little heap. I was so exhausted I even managed to knock back one of those vile Weetabix protein drinks they give you in your goodie bag along with your medal once you've finished.
My time? Probably best not to ask. Suffice it to say it wasn't a personal best or anything close to it, so it's probably a good thing I'd decided not to worry about that. It was under an hour and let's leave it at that. The second-slowest I've ever run this particular course.
I'm more worried about how I couldn't just keep going. It's possible I set off too fast, but even so, this is only 10k. A quarter of the distance I'm setting out to run (slightly less than a quarter in fact, but who's going to quibble over a couple of km). A vast improvement is needed. Soon.

The day ended on a good note, though. I got to meet British athletics hero Jo Pavey after the race (she'd won the women's event, I didn't dare ask her how fast she'd gone), and we had a little chat and she asked me how it had gone. I told her it had been hard and she gave me a big hug and said it had been hard for her too and how the humidity had hit her at the end, and that I shouldn't worry about not being at my best today. So there you go. That's a top athlete telling me not to worry. So I'm not going to. Yet.